Dominating Run Defenses

by: Keith Roerdink
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Different teams. Different schemes. Different coaches. Different levels of play. But Ohio State, Duquesne, Edinboro and Trinity all shared one very important distinction at the end of the 2005 college football season. They all led their respective NCAA Divisions in stopping the run. And while the way they accomplished their No. 1 ranking varied, a closer look at each program revealed some common threads to their success.

All four agreed that personnel is the biggest determining factor in keeping an opponents’ run game in check. But it’s more than just having better athletes, it’s having intelligent players who can read, react and operate to the peak of their athletic abilities within the framework of whatever scheme is played. Familiarity with the system is another key. Operating in a system that they know intimately cuts down on mistakes and leads to more instinctive play. That onus falls not only on the player to learn it, but in the coaching staff to properly communicate it. Physically, speed is the valued commodity over size. It’s great if you’ve got both, but these four programs got it done courtesy of some lightning bolts in shoulder pads, often at the linebacker position. Lastly, each programs excels at the most basic fundamentals of the game, specifically tackling.

A recent study conducted by American Football Monthly found that Run Defense was the second most important statistic related to winning among NCAA Division I top 20 teams over the past five years, behind Scoring Defense. The coaches from 2005’s run-stuffing squads can easily attest to those findings, regardless of level. When you make your opponent one-dimensional, good things will follow.

“It’s one of the oldest concepts in football,” said Coach Lou Tepper, formerly of Division II Edinboro University and new head coach at Indiana (PA). “But it’s true.”

His defense, which led Division II in Scoring Defense, Total Defense and Rushing Defense with just 53.7 rushing yards given up per game, is more or less the same scheme that Tepper helped formulate when he coached linebackers for Bill Dooley’s Virginia Tech team back in 1978.

That scheme is a player-friendly 3-4 attack that has 11 different positions with no ‘mirror’ positions. Even with multiple fronts, Tepper’s defense only requires players to play one major and one minor technique. The time that’s saved by not having to master four or even five techniques allows Tepper additional time to work on the fundamentals..

“Silly as it sounds, we teach them to take on blockers,” Tepper said. “And I have rarely seen great coaching of taking on blockers. I think it is probably one of the most misunderstood concepts in football. I see it violated in the NFL and violated in college football a lot. But if you watch our players, they know how to take on blockers. The second thing is pursuit, the third is tackling and the fourth is coverage skills. We’re going to work on those four things everyday in practice and then go into techniques. And then into our scheme. And more and more today as I watch other programs work from the NFL on down, teams go right to schemes. They don’t spend much time on fundamentals. And not enough time with technique. But I think we’re well rounded there.”

Another staple of Teppers’ scheme is a constant shifting of the defensive front, often bringing up a rush linebacker for a 4-3 look. They will also play a 3-3 at times. Linebackers have always thrived in this system and Tepper has coached more than 20 players over the years who have gone on to play professionally. Movement is not restricted to the front seven and with lateral moves in the secondary, coverage is disguised until the moment the ball is snapped. Edinboro blitz’s more than Tepper’s teams at Illinois and their ability to keep an offense guessing and out of rhythm has resulted in 70 interceptions for the Fighting Scots over the past three seasons and 39 sacks in 2005. Unlike the NFL, where sack yardage comes off of the passing yardage total, in college football, sack yardage is deducted from rushing yards so a team that leads the nation in run defense has also dropped it’s share of quarterbacks.

Nobody stopped the run in 2005 like Trinity College, who gave up a mere 40.6 yards per game. They also led Division III in Total Defense. Trinity also utilizes the 3-4 as their primary defense and Jim Devanney, the teams’ defensive coordinator during the 2005 season who took over the reins as head coach last December said it’s even more critical to stop the run at this level, where most teams lack the talent to consistently move the ball through the air. Each week, Devanney’s ‘D’ determines what their opponents strengths are in the running game – and then takes them away.

“We are more of a gap charging 3-4 defense so our ‘D’ lineman are quick and aggressive on a lot of plays, there’s a lot of stunting and we play a lot of different fronts,” Devanney said. “Where we think we are most successful and the reason that we are most successful against the run is we play a lot of ‘quarters’ coverage and really get our safeties involved in the run.

“We try very hard to send the ball to the unblocked player so we spend a lot of time teaching our players run ‘fits’ and our linebackers in particular are very well coached. We do a very good job of teaching our linebackers how to fit on run plays and not necessarily that they need to make all the plays but they need to fit the right way to send the ball carrier to the unblocked player and we spend a lot of time on that.”

At the heart of Trinity’s brick wall run defense is their weak inside or ‘Mike’ linebacker. The player manning that spot has been an all-league selection for the five years that Devanney has been on staff. Senior captain Avon Morgan made the all-New England Small College Athletic Conference first team for the second year in a row as the Bantam’s ‘Mike’ linebacker. In Trinity’s scheme, the ‘Mike’ is freed up to play the run above all else, with coverage responsibility checked to a safety if needed. Like Edinboro, success started up front, where Trinity defensive end Michael Blair earned league Defensive Player of the Year honors. Still, when it comes time to game planning, Devanney, a former strong safety in a 4-3 defense at Trinity and NESCAC Defensive Player of the Year in 1992, is first figuring out what his best options are based on a ‘Cover 4’ alignment in the secondary.

“We’re going to play quarters coverage 65% of the time, but we can play quarters coverage with a number of different fronts,” Devanney said. “So we’ll figure out what fronts will be best against the opponent we’re playing based on what their run schemes are, based on what they’re offensive line’s strengths and weaknesses are. And the second thing we do on Monday is get into our zone blitz package and we say what zone pressures are going to be most effective against the run plays that this team runs. And then we decide what zone pressures will be best against the pass plays. And if we find a zone pressure that’s good against the pass but not against the run, we’ll cancel it from the game plan.”

While Edinboro and Trinity have found success with a 3-4 base defense, The Ohio State University and Duquesne University avoid the need for a rush linebacker by playing a 4-3 scheme from the get-go. The Buckeye defense held runners to just 74.5 yards per game on average. It’s the second time in the past three seasons that they led Division I, holding opposing backs to just 62.3 yards per game in 2003. All told it was a good debut for Jim Heacock, the Buckeyes first year defensive coordinator who’s been on staff since 1996 coaching the defensive tackles his first four years, before taking over the entire defensive line in 2000.

Given what quality personnel means to any defensive scheme, it would be easy to pin the success of this year’s defense on Bobby Carpenter, Anthony Schlegel and Butkus Award runner-up A.J. Hawk, arguably the nations best line backing corps. But the Buckeye’s coordinator points to a total team effort in 2005 that includes not just his front seven, but his secondary, as well.

“I think it’s important that your front four can be physical and hold the point,” Heacock said. “And obviously having linebackers that can run, like we did. I think the combination of getting some penetration from your front and holding your gap up there and having some linebackers that can run off of there and then probably we’ve been very fortunate to have some safeties that can come down into the box and play run defense and give us a little bit of help.”

This past season’s senior-laden group got more aggressive under Heacock, rolling out increased zone pressures and zone blitzes that led to a Big 10-leading 39 sacks. It’s a combination of experience, intelligence and unselfishness, according to Heacock, that allowed his defense to implement more tweaks to the scheme and be more flexible. The results? Ohio State held seven opponents under 100 yards rushing, including arch rival Michigan who managed just 32 yards.

“I’d say that we did play a much more aggressive defense or philosophy this year,” Heacock said. “I think we could a little bit more because we had more speed and we could get our defensive line moving and our linebackers could cover up. We felt like we needed to attack a little bit more. You get all those spread offenses and we feel like we have to be aggressive and not give the quarterback a chance to stand back there and throw the ball and know where we’re going to be. So I feel we were a little more multiple this year and more attacking.”

Duquesne University has also employed the 4-3 defense to their advantage. The Dukes led Division I-AA in Total Defense and Run Defense, surrendering just 72.5 yards to enemy backs. They also ranked second in Pass Defense. At the controls is Joe Bernard, who completed his third year as defensive coordinator. Bernard had already had success with a similar version of his current defense at Fairfield University, where the Stags led the nation in Total Defense and Run Defense in 1998.

“We’re built on a lot of speed,” Bernard said. “It’s a 4-3 Stack defense and we’ve really modeled it after what Miami has run for years. The two keys to the whole defense are you need a great nose guard and a great ‘Mike’ linebacker. Both of ours (Josh Antinopoulos and Harry Carter) were All Americans.” The Dukes also had defensive end Antoine Bullock, whose 12-sack season made him just the fourth player in school history to earn Associated Press All-American honors. Antinopoulos, Carter, Bullock and cornerback Michael Ford were four of five starting seniors on the Dukes defense, and had all started since their sophomore season.

A smaller unit that only averaged 240 pounds across their front four, Duquesne parlayed their speed and athleticism into a penetrating, one-gap system that had defenders reading blocks on the run and getting over the line of scrimmage to make plays. Having an experienced core of players also gave Bernard the confidence to blitz more this season than ever before. And while they typically play ‘Cover 2’ behind their front seven, Duquesne often went to a ‘Cover 1’ or ‘Cover 0’ when bringing heat, rarely choosing to zone blitz. They also found success blitzing out of a 3-3-5 against more pass-happy teams, though no team was too happy with their inability to establish the run.

“My philosophy has always been that if you can narrow them down to just being one dimensional, you have them,” Bernard said. “And obviously the thing we always focus on is to be able to take away people’s ability to run the football. Because if they are just pressed into a passing mode all the time then we feel pretty good that we’ve got you where we want you and then we can start dictating what we want to do.

“You can see it in their eyes when they can’t run the football and then they’ve got some issues.” And that’s often the first sign that another victory is on its way.

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